Education and Training Amendment Bill

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in support of the Education and Training Amendment Bill, although not without some reservations. So this is a fix-up bill, and it’s very unfortunate that it’s about the fourth time since I have been in Parliament that this Act has had to be fixed up in the past, sort of, 12 or 14 months.

So the bill amends the Education and Training Act 2020 with some relatively minor things, and others that are a little bit more significant. So it clarifies the police vetting, checking, of children’s workers and school employees. It extends the ban on charging trainees a compulsory student services fee. It extends that by a year. It emphasises that only people holding teaching positions can use physical restraint, and there are some other minor amendments around powers of intervention by the Secretary for Education.

So clause 4 covers specifying the agencies to which the joint statements of expectation can be issued by the Minister of Education and the Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti. Clause 5 to 7 is around the use of physical restraint at registered schools, and this is the one that clarifies that only a person holding a teacher’s position can use physical restraint. I suppose in that area, having been very familiar with the work of teacher aides, I wonder how on a practical level that is going to play out for teacher aides, many of whom are dealing with students who can be quite physical, and so I do want to acknowledge the amazing work that teacher aides right across our schools do. I hope this doesn’t make their life more difficult.

Clause 9 relates to the interventions that may be used by the Secretary for Education. Clause 9 is relating to the regulations around early childhood services, requiring ministerial approval to apply for a licence, and that application has to be granted before an application for a licence can be made.

So I guess two of the more significant parts are around this transitional provision of charging compulsory student fees. That came about in the August 2020 amendment to the Education and Training Act, when the mergers were enabled of industry training providers (ITPs) and industry training organisations (ITOs). I think it is worth noting that that select committee process was a very truncated process, and I really wonder now if some of these matters could have been dealt with much better had that not been such a truncated process.

I hark back to something that I feel quite a grievance over: that submissions at that time to the merger of the ITPs and the ITOs—only 29 percent of the submissions in that process supported it, and yet the Minister called that an overwhelming majority. I think of that very truncated select committee process and those hundreds of submissions, and had that process been a little more fulsome, perhaps we wouldn’t be revisiting needing to extend out that period whereby it’s prohibited for tertiary providers to charge a compulsory student services fee to students in the workplace. I note that the reason it has to be extended out, from the select committee report, was it hasn’t been possible to finish consultation with the learners and providers to confirm arrangements, and so it’s having to be pushed out. Charges can’t be made until after 31 December next year, 2022, which in essence means that they cannot be charged until 2023. I think that could well have been avoided had the original bill, in 2020, not been rushed through.

Clause 13 is with regard to the police vetting of persons who carry out work with children, and I know in my previous role it became quite difficult to judge which people needed to have that vetting, just how much time they might be spending with children, whether that was their primary role, and so it became quite difficult, and a definition of a children’s worker came through. So this enables a person to carry out work with children, but who don’t fall within that definition of a children’s worker, to be required to provide police vetting. Of course, we agree that we want to see that it is completely covered and we are completely sure of those that are working with our young people that they have gone through the appropriate processes.

We acknowledge that, from time to time, fix-ups like this are needed, but it is incredibly frustrating for us that this piece of legislation is needing so many fix-ups on such a regular basis. While those that are perhaps listening might say, “Well, what is the issue with that?”, the issue is that it takes officials, it takes select committee time, it takes MPs’ time, and it takes time in this House to go through these amendments. So we would urge the Government to think seriously when they try and truncate these processes. Often, in the long term, it ends up being much more convoluted and takes up much more time for everyone. Of course, National opposed that original legislation, the Education and Training Act 2020, because we were concerned about some of the big changes that were occurring from this in terms of the centralisation, and I would have to say some of the things that we foresaw at that time are now coming to fruition. Again, had the process been less truncated, perhaps they could have been avoided—things like Te Pūkenga, the chief executive not knowing which of his subsidiary companies are viable and which are not.

There are some really serious issues in our education space at the moment that are impacting significantly on not only our students in the education sector but our industries—things like lack of international students, insufficient numbers being admitted into medical schools. That has not been increased since 2015, even though we have a desperate shortage of medical graduates, a desperate shortage also of veterinary science graduates, and, again, insufficient numbers going into our vet school, and insufficient funding for Massey University, which is our only vet school, to be able to provide further places. We also have concerns, obviously, in our compulsory schooling sector around the state of our maths and our reading skills.

So I suppose our message is that while we support this fix-up bill to improve and make up for some of the things that weren’t covered earlier, we really wish that our time and the officials’ time were being spent on looking at those very, very major issues in our education sector, rather than, once again, dealing with minor fix-ups with a bill that really should have been done in the first place. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker It’s a pleasure to take a call on this bill. Despite being the deputy chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, this is the first time I’ve been able to take a call on this bill: the first reading I was on maternity leave and the second reading I was locked down in Auckland, so it’s lovely to get the chance to speak on this bill. Despite not being able to take a call on this bill previously, I was part of the deliberations on this bill and just wanting to clarify from what the member who’s just resumed her seat was saying: in this particular bill that we’re debating, we only received four submissions, and only one of those submissions was on matters actually contained within the bill and was supportive of this bill, so in fact we had 100 percent support at select committee for this bill going forward—and I understand now across the House as well, so unanimous support across the House as well.

As the Minister has said, it follows on from the substantive reforms to the education system that were brought about in the last term of Parliament and brought about the Education and Training Act 2020. The principal Act was enacted in August 2020 and repealed the former education and training legislation and provided a simpler legislative framework. As the Minister has said, that is a huge undertaking, bringing early learning, schooling, and tertiary education into the same statute. This bill makes a number of small, non-controversial but relatively urgent amendments to the principal Act, and I will just cover a few of those in the short time I have available.

The one change that I think is significant is that it clarifies that education workers who meet the definition of a children’s worker in the Children’s Act must be safety checked under the Act, rather than police vetted under the principal Act, and that all other early childhood centre or school employees must meet the relevant police and vetting requirements under this principal Act. That’s the main change, which I think we can all agree is important to bring to the House.

So, in conclusion, this is a pragmatic bill. It is good lawmaking to ensure any issues—in a substantive reform—that are introduced are remedied quickly and efficiently, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I wish to talk on the Education and Training Amendment Bill in its third reading. National support this bill. I’ve heard previously from my good friend and colleague Penny Simmonds that this bill is a clean-up bill, and while we appreciate, in National, and acknowledge that from time to time we will need, to in this House, undertake fix-ups of errors and mistakes or gaps, potentially, that were missed through process, this is another example of a bill where we are here because of failures of actions previously.

This bill amends the Education and Training Act 2020, an Act that National opposed, and we opposed it for a number of reasons—and that’s why it’s relevant to this bill today—including because of the fact that that process was a truncated process. As we know, through this House, when you don’t provide due time and consideration, you run a much higher risk of making mistakes, and what we are seeing as a result of that today is a process in which we are now consuming this House’s time to fix up a bill in which the opportunity cost, I guess, is that we could be doing other stuff. We’ve seen earlier today and, actually, last night some great examples of bills that should have gone through the House in a bipartisan manner that will make a significant impact. Time is short in this House and it is a reflection that—you know, let’s get it right the first time and do due process.

I wanted to also just refer to the fact that this bill, obviously, will impact a number of elements across our education sector. It will impact a number of the elements that are so important to the fabric of this country I want to—if you will just allow, Mr Speaker—call out to Belmont Primary School in my local electorate of the North Shore. The principal, Bruce Cunningham, does an absolutely amazing job. Yes, that school will be impacted by this bill, but so will all of the teachers and teacher-aides—as my colleague mentioned before—who do an absolutely sterling job in terms of supporting and educating our young people through what has been a very challenging year.

This bill will have impact on them. I think my colleague mentioned, quite rightly—and I have a number of those schools that work with children with disability within my electorate as well, through teacher-aides, and the impacts around the changes in the clauses around restraint, etc., will impact them. They do a hugely important role and they bring great value, and I’ve visited those schools before lockdown. Of course, we’ve been in lockdown for 107 days, so it was a little while ago, but I have visited those schools and seen the amazing work that those teachers and teacher-aides do. I just want to acknowledge them and wish them all a very merry Christmas.

As we’ve heard, the select committee—and I acknowledge the deputy chair of the committee that went through the process on this bill—received a massive number of submissions. I think it was four in totality. I’m sure they were all of extreme quality, and it’s quality, not quantity, by its sound. But I think what we really want to reflect on is not the select committee process that we’re referring to in regards to this bill; it’s actually the select committee process that should have been done with a more detailed rigour for the legislation that this bill amends, which is the Education and Training Act 2020.

The Act is set in a context of an education system in New Zealand which has a significant number of issues and challenges, and this bill will impact that. But it is important to recognise some of the key issues that are not addressed, actually, I guess, in this bill which probably could have likewise been amended through the select committee process, and that is in regards to the fact that 40 percent—or two in five—of children are not attending school regularly. That is a significant issue for our children and for our country, and one in which I know the education system that this bill will impact will reflect on and say that that is not good enough in terms of performance. The reality for our young people is that if they’re not at school, they cannot learn, and they can, therefore, not succeed.

So the importance of using these opportunities in the House when we have such bills as this to make amendments that will improve or mitigate such issues is so important, and it is a great shame that we aren’t using this opportunity to deal with some of the more significant issues impacting our education system. That is important, of course, because that education system will help grow a more productive economy and help us get our young people focused in the classroom and able to contribute to society.

In regards to the clauses changed here, I think there are a number that are reasonably minor in the context in terms of their implications around the system. But, going back to the point that my colleague mentioned around the impact on that teacher-aide portion, it is actually something that I think is very, very important. It is a significant consideration that maybe we should have thought a little bit more about in terms of this process, and I think that’s probably just a little bit of a learning as we go forward from here.

So, as I said, National support this bill. We acknowledge that the process which we’re going through is one that we would prefer not to do, but that’s where we are, I guess. We are hopeful as we move forward from this point—as are other new colleagues in this House—that we don’t have to go through this process very often, unless it is in circumstances which are considered exceptional. We are confident that we can move on, and we hope that this Government starts to reflect on some of the bigger issues that we face in terms of our education sector, such as declining achievement and attendance, which I’ve mentioned, and bring some of those bills to the House to complement such bills as the bill we are looking at and talking about today. As I said, we support this bill, and I commend it to the House.

It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this bill. It’s the second time today that I’ve had the opportunity to speak in the House about education, as earlier today I was able to ask a question about Taieri College in the Minister’s announcement this morning about three new classrooms. I raise that because the Opposition would have people believe that we are not committed to education, but I am so thrilled at that announcement, which is delivering on our commitment to $100 million in Budget 2021 and 100,000 additional spaces for students by the year 2030.

The Opposition have also raised the question of a truncated select committee process, but this bill doesn’t actually do any significant policy change. This is an inevitable omnibus bill that occurs after a major legislative piece of work, as we have heard, and it cleans up some small, technical elements that inevitably come out after major reform. Colleagues of mine have referred to those, including around schedules which better belong in primary legislation rather than in regulation, around the physical restraint provisions which are really important. And of course, we need to get this sorted by 22 January next year, and, given that there are no major policy changes—in fact, these are small but urgent technical changes—there is no reason to drag this out any longer. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s great to be able to take a call on this, the Education and Training Amendment Bill. A lot of these education bills, they always have the words “education” and “training” in them. So, often, I’ve got to kind of sift through to see what it’s about—to remember what this one is about. I mean, this would probably be more aptly called the “Fix-it-Up Bill”, the “Sometimes You Don’t Get it All in There, So We Come Back to it a Bit Later Bill”, which this is. But, as I reflected on this bill, I remembered my past contributions to this, I reflected on that whakataukī: ko te manu e kai ana te miro nōna te ngahere. Engari, ko te manu e kai ana te mātauranga nōna te ao. The manu that takes in the berries, their domain is the forest, but the manu that partakes of knowledge, their domain is the world.

Just continuing on with that narrative, this bill is about what happens when you drop some of those berries. You drop some of those berries, so you’ve actually got to go back into the forest and pick those berries up, gather up that knowledge and put it into the kete, put it into the statutory, legislative kete, and that’s what we’re doing here today as well. I would encourage us, always, that when we’re weaving our legislation, like the kete, that we make sure that we get those harakeke connections a lot tighter, you get those regulations tighter, you get those clauses tighter, so that the berries don’t fall out. I hope everybody around the House, this Christmas, will be able to eat of the many bountiful berries, the blueberries, the strawberries, and the raspberries with all our whānau this Christmas.

Previous speakers have talked about the small minor technical changes that this bill will enable. There was a whole lot of massive changes that were made, which this bill refers to. So these are just small technical changes. But getting through this bill means that we’ll be able to focus on some of those bigger issues; those really big educational issues that our teachers are continuing to face, particularly in the climate of the COVID crisis.

I do want to mihi to our teachers, who have been doing it tough. They’ve been carrying our tamariki, teaching them through the COVID crisis, through Zoom calls, and with all the turbulence within this year as well, holding that up. And everybody that knows teachers knows that they don’t just do it for the money; they do it because they have a commitment to our tamariki, they have a commitment to our whānau, and they have a commitment to our communities.

And I was reminded of this just recently when I met some teachers in the mighty metropolis of Palmerston North just last Friday, as well—and I acknowledge the member for Palmerston North, Mr Tangi Utikere, who is a part of that most pristine profession, the teaching profession, and I can attest to his incredible efficiency in the teaching profession as well, as a parent of one of his former students, who will very soon—hopefully she’s listening—graduate from university, so that her father can have that university degree on his wall.

Some of the issues that teachers were talking to me about was around the pressures that they feel around learning support—trying to get, you know, dedicated learning support coordinators into every school and early childhood centre, because when you’ve got those pressures, they exacerbate under these COVID conditions as well. So having that sort of support for our disabled children and tamariki with high needs is very, very important, looking at trying to find ways to expand the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme criteria and increase the funding available so that it’s based on need, rather than a fixed amount of funding available. Making that happen would be really, really important; increasing dedicated teacher-aide funding in early childhood centres and schools—and I say that as a former teacher-aide; this is probably going back about 30 years. And I hadn’t realised that what I was doing, as I was talking with these other teachers, was helping to support the main teacher to deal with lots of issues around the classroom. She’d give me little jobs and I’d go off and do them as the teacher-aide, and while I was doing that, she would be able to do some of the classroom management as well. So the importance of teacher-aides helping to manage the pressures in the classroom and finding ways to appropriately fund them is also really, really important. Increasing the number of specialists, psychologists, physiotherapists, and resource teachers—that stuff is all very important as well, that helps to alleviate that pressure that a lot of our teachers are facing as well, and also developing greater professional development pathways as well. Some of those professional development pathways lead some of us to Parliament, as I was just talking about earlier in my speech.

So this is a technical bill. It’s one of those fix-up bills. The manu went into the forest, grabbed as much berries, but the manu took out of the forest too quickly, left some berries behind, and the manu had to go back and get those berries—get that legislative weave a lot tighter. And that’s what this bill does. So the Greens support this bill. Tēnā koe.

Thanks, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak to the third reading of the Education and Training Amendment Bill. This bill makes a number of small and non-controversial but relatively important amendments to the Act, such as the education workers and school employees to meet police vetting requirements. I’ve been a teacher for 22 years and I always thought that was already a requirement, so good job there. The extension of a year of tertiary education providers not charging student services fees, and the clarification of who can use physical restraint on students in a school or an education environment—I still do think it’s worth pointing out that under the Crimes Act, section 48, self-defence, anyone can actually use reasonable force to prevent assaults taking place. I’d hate to think that teachers were hamstrung because they didn’t have specific permission, or an adult, and were not intervening in a situation that could potentially turn serious.

But there are many other matters in education that require the urgency of this bill, such as—we’ve got truancy. We’ve got 67 percent of students who attend school regularly. There’s a select committee inquiry going on at the moment. Literacy and numeracy rates are falling when compared with the rest of the world. There doesn’t seem to be a plan, and no acknowledgment that there is a problem. Special needs, as mentioned before, is an area that’s ever-growing, that needs attention urgently. We’ve got 6,045 special needs students in Auckland who’ve gone through lockdown without extra help that their parents desperately need. Students who must have a routine—these students do—and support to get through the day. I was a special educational needs coordinator for the last 10 years, and these kids without clear direction and a plan find it really difficult just to survive.

💬 Behaviour: bullying is getting worse. And if a student can’t learn in a class—if the class isn’t under control—it’s something that really needs to get sorted, especially after COVID. I just recently read a report from South Auckland that behaviour issues are a major concern at the moment as a result of COVID. Teacher training and retention: when we hear teacher trainees receive 90 minutes total learning how to teach reading, we should be worried. We’re going to find out soon how many teachers are going to give up just because it’s too hard. I’m already aware of classes being taught by teacher aides because there aren’t enough teachers to go around, and we really need to plan for this.

The Government abolished successful charter schools and is making it difficult for those wanting to establish designated character schools. We have to start thinking outside the square to cater for those kids that don’t fit into mainstream schooling. The pending history curriculum which, in its current form, says that New Zealand started in 1840, it’s based on victims and villains, and which won’t represent 83 percent of the New Zealand population. We need to put our kids first, not ideological agendas.

Recovering from COVID is going to be difficult in the teaching profession and education, and ACT has a huge concern for both students and teachers. The mental health issues already manifesting themselves with students and with teachers will need to be dealt with—the falling standards, truancy, teacher training will all need to be dealt with. We need a clear plan. It is a shame there won’t be any consultation in the plan that will go forward. We must get back to basics, and I hope the Government treats these issues with the urgency it has given this bill. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. Let’s get on with this. I commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call.

💬 Harete Hipango: Madam Speaker—oh, Mr Speaker!

Ha, ha! I call Harete Hipango—five minutes.

Aroha mai, my glasses are fogged up with this mask on, and it’s coming towards the end of the week for everybody. So, cognisant of time, I think that this bill is worthy of a little bit more time than the previous speaker, Emily Henderson, gave it, bearing in mind that that’s probably indicative, too, of how the principal Act got rushed through at haste, and with a sense of responsibility, really. My colleagues Penny Simmonds and Simon Watts have addressed the House this afternoon reiterating that very fact.

This Education and Training Amendment Bill is an amendment bill to the principal Act, the Education and Training Act of 2020, which was rushed through in haste. I do recall being in the House at the time that my National Party colleagues were vehemently and robustly debating this and saying to the Government, “Let’s do this properly.” Here we are, a fix-it-up job from the hatch-it-up job that was done in the first instance. So the National Party, yes, we do support this bill going through, because it ought to have been done properly in the first instance, and here we are making amends for the fact that the Government botched it.

When I was speaking to the second reading of this bill before the House, I remember making an analogy to a TV ad of two little boys playing in the sandpit. It was an analogy to a fix-it-up Mitre 10 ad. This time, my analogy is to just remind the Government: withdraw the subscription from your botched TV programme, reality TV. Let’s make sure that these bills that come before the House are dealt with appropriately, properly, for the benefit of our New Zealand public. The explanatory note to this bill is that this amendment bill is about fixing up what wasn’t done properly in terms of the establishment and regulation of the education system under the Education and Training Act 2020.

My colleague Penny Simmonds, who comes from a very extensive background of practice as an educationalist in the education and training sector, as a former chief executive of the Southland institute of technology—23 years’ experience. We have a woman in Parliament who is a member of the National Party, who, when it comes to educational issues, I invite the Government to listen in, to tune in—tune out of the botched TV reality series programme; tune in to the reality and lived life experience of those members on this side of the House who know what we’re speaking about. The contributions that we make are legitimate and valid contributions, not for the politics of what goes on but for making sure that we get things done properly for New Zealanders. The education of our children is important and it’s in a critical crisis situation at the moment, and here we are fixing up a botched-up job.

My colleague has addressed the details of the bill. I am not going to add any further, because I defer to Penny Simmonds, the member of Parliament for Invercargill, who knows this area of education. I invite members of the House, when my colleague speaks and addresses this House on such matters: take heed, listen up, tune in, and get it right. I commend the bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.